In Tune

Posted on May 20, 2012 by alishairish

Growing up in Malaysia, wanting to learn an instrument is a bigger challenge than it ought to be. Firstly, you’re limited by the choice of instruments: you’ll be lucky if you’re actually allowed to choose anything outside of the piano or violin, and luckier still if you find anyone willing to teach you, say, trombone. And secondly, minor failure is permanent failure, especially if you have a less-than-encouraging teacher.

I started piano lessons at about the age of six. I struggled with sight-reading because I wasn’t quick enough, but I had nearly pitch-perfect hearing, so I could reproduce the pieces I needed to learn, as long as I heard them first. This, according to my teacher, was more than a little bit cheaty, so I never got very good because I couldn’t teach myself to sight-read without some – any – input from what I heard first. Reverse-engineering was apparently not how it should be done, and therefore wrong.

It got worse when to try and make things easier, my mum decided that I would no longer sit exams and learn to play for fun and improvement. My teacher really did not like me after that, because as far as she was concerned, what would be the point? By the age of ten I was canny enough to cancel my lessons myself, and then I stopped altogether.

It made me sad, because while I knew I was no great talent, I knew I could be taught. I never found the confidence to try again.

I still try to sing; I say ‘try’ because while I can sing, I largely imitate whoever it is I’m listening to at the time, so I don’t really have a voice that’s my own. It’s also why I’ve never been able to fit into a choir. I’m fun in the car, but useless in a collection of voices.

But I can recognize voices. I can remember licks and variations. I can tell when it’s one orchestra playing a piece or a different one. I can pull lyrics from recesses of my brain I don’t even remember building.

And I have wonderful, encouraging friends.

My lovely cannot-be-without-her best mate Chantelle is an incredibly talented musician. She played euphonium in orchestra, she plays the guitar, she has a wonderful voice that is very clearly her own, and she now sings with a brilliant folk artist, Talis Kimberley, and has taken up the ukulele.

After many conversations and random sing-songs over the years, and based on how my taste in music has evolved, she’s inspired me to try again, and this is what I did, over twenty years after I kicked my piano teacher to the curb.

Meet Iona

This is an Ovation Celebrity, a gorgeous roundback guitar with a nice slim neck that allows even my tiny hands to play all the strings. The guitar was recommended to me by Talis, who has a similar build to me and has similarly small hands, and this guitar fits me perfectly. This was the one year where I looked forward to my tour-of-duty to Malaysia, because I knew I would receive enough birthday money to make this purchase. I really had to talk myself into it, and I’m so glad that I did.

I got her from Absolute Guitars in Bristol, who were incredibly helpful and informative, and most importantly did not once make me feel like a complete idiot. They were happy to answer even the most novice questions and took the time to show me how to do basic things, like use the on-board tuner and tune the guitar myself. They even said that once I get comfortable with my guitar and improve some, I could contact them again and get them to recommend a decent amp and they would sort me out.

I’ve spent a few days since learning a few chords, trying to find a way that makes playing her easy and comfortable. I love her to bits. When she’s tucked up against me and I’m picking and strumming, it’s like I’ve filled a gap I never knew I had.

I’m hoping that as I learn songs to play and sing to them, away from the original music track, I’ll be able to find a voice and a sound that is entirely my own, and I won’t be imitating anyone anymore. It would be pretty cool to find out what I really sound like.

A Long Time Coming (FOs)

Posted on May 13, 2012 by alishairish

I’ve been slow to get back into things since coming back from Kuala Lumpur, but I think I’ve finally got there now. I’m back at the Horniman Gardens comfortably – that is, as long as Bank holidays and dental appointments don’t interrupt – and I’ve started a couple of other things, but for now I have finished objects to show.

Pattern: Fiori di Zucca, by Alice Yu (Socktopus Sock Club June 2008)
Yarn: Dream in Color Smooshy in Gelato al Pistacchio
Needles: 2.5mm

At long last, nearly four years later, I have finished these socks. If anything, these socks tell me how much I’ve grown since I first tried to knit them. When I first tried, I had to read the chart every single row, almost every single square, and I could find no rhythm or sense in the pattern. This time, I whipped through it because I found a pattern to the pattern, a rhythm to the lace, and all went very well indeed.

The only problem I had was that because of my chunky calves, the lace looks painfully stretched on the leg, and while it fits very well on the foot, the shift from the leg to the foot made the heel cup slightly baggy on me. I rarely choose to knit the large size of a sock pattern, but I needed to here to fit my leg, and I wish I had the foresight to decrease around the heel to make it fit better.

Oh well. If you’re not still learning, you’re already dead, I suppose.

I also finished something else last month, but I started it probably about two summers ago. I’m very glad I’ve finished it now, but I think I did bite off a little more than I could chew when I chose this project.

I finished a quilt. A pretty big quilt, that involved some small piecing, appliqué, and my first attempts at quilting and binding. The small piecing was fine, and actually quite fun to do, largely because it was done entirely on the machine – well, not my machine per se, but Mummy Irish’s machine, because that was where I did most of this quilt. In fact, let it be known that if I didn’t take this thing up to Wolverley it would never have got done.

Mummy Irish showed me how to sew together the pie pieces neatly. Then now to appliqué the pies onto the red squares. Then she helped me put the quilt top together. Then she helped me make the sandwich. And when I utterly failed to hand-quilt the thing in different coloured threads, she decided I should just machine-quilt waves across the quilt while hand-quilting the pies in the ditch.

Then she showed me how to bind. In fact, she did the machine work and then showed me how to hand-stitch the final stage. And then because she was quicker, she finished the hand-stitching for me.

This quilt is not even for me.

It’s for the son of a special young man, to whom I owe a lot. In fact, I owe him my entire career move and therefore my new life.

So I’m very glad that this quilt is done, and despite how daunting it was because of its size, I’m glad I made it this big, because his son will be two in November, and I want this quilt to last.

Next time I’m going to aim smaller. Like a cushion. Or a hot water bottle cover. Let’s start with that.

Oy.

Speechless

Posted on April 26, 2012 by alishairish

I didn’t know, but this week is Knitting and Crochet Blog Week. If I’d known, I probably would have planned stuff and taken part, because it looks like a lot of fun.

I knew there were people I know that would be taking part, and there would be fun blog posts to read this week.

But I wasn’t expecting this.

Yesterday’s blog post theme was ‘Your Knitting and Crochet Hero’. Ruth, for all I honour, respect and love her, chose to write about me and my Montview.

I have no words. Just teary smiles that threaten to split my face wide open.

Go show her some love. She’s more amazing than the English vocabulary has words to describe.

Eleven Threes

Posted on April 22, 2012 by alishairish

Two weeks ago this year, I turned thirty-three.

I don’t mind it. Largely because I don’t look it. But I also very much don’t feel it, nevermind act it. So much so that one of the apprentices at the Horniman Gardens demanded to see my driver’s license, after which he insisted I must be practising some form of voodoo.

I took it as a compliment.

I probably should have done more with my life by now. I should be well-anchored in some kind of career, rather than trying to start one. I try to not let that bother me too much, because in many ways I’m rather grateful for the journey I’ve had to make in order to get this far.

I am thirty-three. I wear jeans and funky t-shirts and plaid shirts and sweatshirts, my feet either in trainers, leather work boots or hiking boots. I have a very loyal Rab jacket. I have a mass of hair that I dye mahogany violet, that you can only see in the right light, so it feels like a secret surprise. I have worn the same watch since 1997.

But this year, I am thirty-three, and also a fledgling horticulturist. I am thirty-three, and I am very happy to declare that I am a gardener, a junior plantswoman on the road to being a hopefully very good one.

This year, I am thirty-three. And I know what I want to be when I grow up, because I’m already here.

Back and in the Saddle

Posted on April 20, 2012 by alishairish

We’ve been home since the weekend now, and we’re pretty much recovered from the long-haul flight, though Nick seems to have picked up some nasty bug. The laundry is all sorted, the suitcases are all put away, and life goes back on track.

I have socks to finish.

I have purchased new steel-toe-capped boots.

They are RedBacks, and they are awesome.

I have acquired new colours to play with.

(The rest of the mess isn’t mine; that’s Nick’s miniature painting mess.)

And in my absence, my chilli plants have begun to flower.

I still have a couple more exciting things coming up, all related to birthday acquisitions and new projects to do, but I think at the moment I’m just super-excited to be home.

Because there’s nothing like great friends, good food and knitting to make everything feel like home.

In Preparation

Posted on March 30, 2012 by alishairish

Every other year now Nick and I go and do the tour of duty back to Malaysia. We’re off soon for two weeks, and I’ve had to get stuff ready.

Apart from making sure that the flat is in order and we have enough laundry and haven’t forgotten anything, there are a couple of things that are unique to the Irish household preparations.

Thanks to our Kindles, both Nick and I are properly armed with enough reading. Once upon a time we’d have a backpack stuffed with paperbacks. No more. I think for once Nick might actually not run out of things to read on this trip. I’m slower, so I’m in no real danger.

Also, I’ve had to prepare knitting.

I finished a baby blanket for a nephew that arrived nearly 6 months ago. It’s Rowan Fine Milk Cotton, which is not my ideal choice, but as this child lives in a tropical country, I had to do the right thing and get knitting with cotton. It’s a lovely fabric, though, and will wash well in the machine.

I’ve started a plain stocking stitch sock in a nice, 6-ply sportweight yarn. This is Regia World College Color in Campus; there was an offer on this yarn, and I now own a ball of each colour in the College series. That’s nine pairs of nice plain boot socks. Nine.

And I’ve prepared a nice picot cuff for another more brain-worthy sock pattern. This is the first package from this year’s Knit Love Club, and I fully intend to knit all six of the patterns this year. I may fail spectacularly.

There’s no round-up for March, as the reading and film-viewing has been a little thin this month, but with all the travelling, I’m sure I’ll have stuff to write about for next month’s round-up. That is, if I ever work out where to start.

I’ll be back in a couple of weeks, with hopefully plenty to show.

The NHS

Posted on March 20, 2012 by alishairish

I am very lucky in that I rarely get very sick. And I mean crucially sick. I have long bad colds, and I get the flu, but nothing of any great concern. I have only been admitted into hospital once, back in Malaysia, for dengue fever, which is a very nasty thing. But I was in an efficient, clean, private hospital, and my parents footed the bill.

Yes. There was a bill. I thought that was how it always worked.

Until I went to university here, I didn’t realize that the University Health Service was free not because I’d paid my school fees, but because it was meant to work that way. I had chest x-rays when I developed adult onset asthma. I had physio when I sprained my ankle during kung-fu. I had ultrasound therapy when I compacted something in my shoulder in a defensive exercise gone wrong. I had my first smear test. I was carefully cared for when I got chicken pox at the age of 27, which meant it hit me like a ton of bricks.

All for only the price of whatever prescription medication I needed. I expected to pay for my medicine, but could never really wrap around my head around the idea that I didn’t owe the doctors, nurses and the service anything at all. Other than to get well.

Away from university, I now have a local surgery, with a wonderful GP. Yes, so I have to ring up at eight in the morning on the day if I wanted an appointment, but I am rarely – as I said – urgently ill. If I was, there was the walk-in centre, which means waiting a while, but I would get seen. If I was in terrible need, I have always been certain I would be cared for.

I broke my first ever bone at the age of 28. I got x-rayed, advised, wrapped up and given a pair of crutches with word to return for a check up in six weeks. For nothing.

I developed plantar fasciitis after attempting the Trailwalker challenge in 2009. I first spent weeks with a foot clinic, doing everything from exercises to laser therapy and getting insoles made. Eventually I was recommended acupuncture, which alongside my training at the gym, made a huge difference to how well and how much I could walk without pain.

All that, for nothing.

One of our dear friends had to be in the ICU for several weeks because of complications involving her heart and lungs. There was talk of surgery, of observation, of recovery. All those weeks she was cared for, she didn’t owe them anything.

I fell into depression, and on my GP’s advice I tried Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. They in turn felt I was better suited to something else. I waited, and did a different kind of therapy for a while. It suited me even less, in the end. So now I have anti-depressants.

The entire journey that ended with me needing to pay only £7.40 for enough medication to enable me to be me for two months at a time, cost me nothing.

I know that I am very lucky to be sufficiently healthy that I only rely on the NHS for my prescriptions. I am also lucky that Nick’s health insurance at work also covers me. But I am not everyone. There are people in greater need than me, and who are not so fortunate to have the option of health insurance.

Last week, when I had to go into hospital for a minor procedure, I marvelled again at how I’m being cared for at no cost. I marvelled at how if the results of the procedure bore bad news, I was certain that I would be told my next steps, and how I would achieve them, and who would be there to help me. Luckily for me, it didn’t.

But if that procedure were to take place next week, I would not be marvelling. I would be scared. Because that certainty is now gone.

I don’t fully understand the changes that the NHS Bill is proposing. All I understand is that as it passes, the NHS – declared “one of the most humanitarian acts that has ever been undertaken in peace time” – would never be the same again. Until Monday afternoon, I knew anyone and everyone would be cared for by this great institution. On Monday evening a friend of mine said something quite simple, and yet thinking about it now, it’s like a blow to the chest:

“I got well for free.”

Today, I no longer know for sure.

Back home in Malaysia, I know that there are people less well-off who have to travel into the capital city at great cost, to then pay for their medication that may only last them a month, because that is all they can afford at the time. I know that a cousin of mine would be deeply out of pocket if not for the generosity of our families who were willing to help him when his only daughter had to be hospitalized. I know my parents opened their wallets when I needed treatment for dengue fever.

I am very grateful for the NHS, even though I am very fortunate to be well and able. I am grateful that people I know and their loved ones have been cared for at minimum cost, which helps ease such burdens. I am grateful that when Nick’s grandfather was ill and had to go to hospital, there was little to worry about other than the state of his health, because the NHS was there.

I am not so sure that my children would worry as little we did for their grandfather, my beloved father-in-law.

It is this uncertainty that is making everyone worry. And I don’t want to get used to it.

In The Making

Dreaming, Creating, Growing, Never Knowing